Olympics
At Paris 2024, Israeli and Palestinian athletes joust over Gaza war
As Israeli and Palestinian judoists hit the tatami mats at the Paris Olympics on Tuesday, the war raging in their homeland was at the front of their minds.
Two athletes – one from each side – fought and lost to separate opponents.
But once defeated, they gave different messages that highlighted how personal it was for competitors, and how difficult it has been for the organisers to create an Olympic truce after 10 months of conflict between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants in Gaza.
“I think here at the Olympics, we are here to make peace, but if you are making war in our country and want to make peace here, it’s like you have two faces,” Feras Badawi, one of eight Palestinian athletes at the Games, told reporters having just lost his first round match in the under 81 kg category against Tajik Somon Makhmadbekov.
He said he could never compete against Israeli athletes or shake their hands amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza that has seen at least 39,400 Palestinians killed since Israel unleashed its offensive against Hamas in response to the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people.
Minutes later, in the women’s under 63 kg category, Israeli judoka Gili Sharir was also contemplating her defeat to reigning French Olympic champion Clarisse Agbegnenou, but like Badawi faced questions about the broader political context.
“We can’t ignore what’s going on, we can use it to our advantage. I believe in Israel, I love Israel and it was an honour for me to fight with the Israeli flag on my chest,” Sharir, one of the 88 Israeli athletes in Paris.
She said that as an Israeli athlete she was used to people not shaking her hand, but wished sport could take precedence over politics.
The exchanges at the Champs de Mars arena came after an Algerian judoka was disqualified from a potential match-up with an Israeli on Monday and were the latest example of how the conflict has cast a shadow behind the scenes at the start of Olympics.
The expectations ahead of the Games were that there could be widespread protests on the margins. At events where Israeli athletes competed the concern was that there could be significant actions displaying anti-Israeli sentiment, but that has been sporadic.
Palestinian flags have been waved. Some banners have called for a “Free Palestine” or accused Israel of genocide – a charge Israel rejects.
There have been some vitriolic chants at soccer matches and French prosecutors have opened an investigation into death threats against Israeli athletes, a worrying turn of events 52 years after 11 Israelis were killed at the Munich Games in 1972.
TIT FOR TAT
Verbal jousts have mostly emanated from the respective officials of both delegations as they seek to defend their corners.
At the opening ceremony, Palestinian athletes wore political symbols on their jackets, drawing a rebuke from Israeli officials, who said they had broken the Olympic charter.
From the outset the Palestinian Olympic Committee (POC) sent letters to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Football Federation asking for Israel to be suspended over the war, which it said equated to Russia’s suspension over its assault on Ukraine.
On Tuesday, POC chief Jibril Rajoub, who spent 17 years in Israeli prisons, lambasted what he called the IOC’s double standards for not responding to his letters and ignoring its own charter as he outlined the heavy toll the war had taken on Palestinian athletes.
He accused some Israeli athletes of glorifying the war on social media and in particular targeted Israel’s judoka flagbearer Peter Paltchik over a media post.
“Is he qualified in such a global, international, peaceful, humanitarian event to raise a flag?” Rajoub told reporters. “They should raise a red card to Israel.”
The Israeli embassy in Paris dismissed Rajoub’s accusations calling it a “smear campaign” to “discredit and hurt him using lies and deception”.
At the Israeli Olympic Committee, officials did not mince their words. Speaking to Reuters, Yael Arad described Rajoub as a “convicted terrorist”.
“You know, people can choose who they want to cheer but it’s an outrageous disgrace to use the arena for political or much more for attacks of the Israeli athletes,” she said.
“But we choose to see the good side. We choose to see the Israeli flag which is the biggest and strongest brand of Israel. When we see it we think about prevailing (after) Oct. 7,” the former Olympic judoka said.
-Reuters
Paris 2024 sold a record 12 million tickets for the Olympics and Paralympics, beating the Games record previously set by London 2012, organisers said on Sunday.
Some 9.5 million tickets were sold for the Olympics and 2.5 million for the Paralympics, which end on Sunday.
In 2012, London organisers set the record for the Paralympics with 2.7 million tickets sold but only 8.2 million were sold for the Olympics.
-Reuters
The French capital will pay tribute to Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei, who was set on fire by her boyfriend, by naming a sports facility in her honour, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on Friday.
The marathon runner, who competed in the Paris Games last month died on Thursday, four days after she was doused in petrol and ignited by her boyfriend in Kenya, in the latest attack on a female athlete in the country.
The 33-year-old, who finished 44th in her Olympic Games debut, suffered burns to more than 75% of her body in Sunday’s attack, Kenyan and Ugandan media reported.
“She dazzled us here in Paris. We saw her. Her beauty, her strength, her freedom, and it was in all likelihood her beauty, strength and freedom which were intolerable for the person who committed this murder,” Hidalgo told reporters.
“Paris will not forget her. We’ll dedicate a sports venue to her so that her memory and her story remains among us and helps carry the message of equality, which is a message carried by the Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
Cheptegei is the third prominent sportswoman to be killed in Kenya since October 2021. Kenyan Sports Minister Kipchumba Murkomen described Cheptegei’s death as a loss “to the entire region”.
“This is a critical moment— not just to mourn the loss of a remarkable Olympian, but to commit ourselves to creating a society that respects and protects the dignity of every individual,” Uganda’s Athletes commission Chair Ganzi Semu Mugula said on Friday.
-Reuters
Engineer’s descendants say French capital landmark ‘not intended as advertising platform’
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has triggered a heated debate by saying she wants to keep the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower after the summer Games are over.
“The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee],” she told the Ouest-France newspaper over the weekend.
“So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower,” she added.
Some Parisians backed the move, but others – including heritage campaigners – said it was a bad idea and would “defile” the French capital’s iconic monument.
The five rings – 29m (95ft) wide, 15m high and weighing 30 tonnes – were installed on the Eiffel Tower before the Paris Olympics opened on 26 July, and were expected to be taken down after the Paralympics’ closing ceremony on 8 September.
But Ms Hidalgo said she wanted to keep the interlaced rings of blue, yellow, black, green and red, symbolising the five continents.
She added that the current rings – each one measuring 9m in diameter – were too heavy and would be replaced by a lighter version at some point.
The Socialist mayor also claimed that “the French have fallen in love with Paris again” during the Games, and she wanted “this festive spirit to remain”.
Some Parisians as well as visitors to the French capital supported the mayor.
“The Eiffel Tower is very beautiful, the rings add colour. It’s very nice to see it like this,” a young woman, who identified herself as Solène, told the France Bleu website.
But Manon, a local resident, said this was “a really bad idea”.
“It’s a historic monument, why defile it with rings? It was good for the Olympics but now it’s over, we can move on, maybe we should remove them and return the Eiffel Tower to how it was before,” he told France Bleu.
Social media user Christophe Robin said Ms Hidalgo should have consulted Parisians before going ahead with her plan.
In a post on X, he reminded that the Eiffel Tower featured a Citroën advert in 1925-36.
The Eiffel Tower was built in1889 for the World’s Fair. The wrought-iron lattice tower was initially heavily criticised by Parisian artists and intellectuals – but is now seen by many as the symbol of the “City of Light”.
Ms Hidalgo, who has been running Paris since 2014, is known for her bold – and sometimes controversial – reforms.
Under her tenure, many city streets, including the banks of the river Seine, have been pedestrianised.
Last year, she won convincingly a city referendum to ban rental electric scooters. However, fewer than 8% of those eligible turned out to vote.
But both drivers’ groups and opposition figures attacked the scheme, saying the SUV classification was misleading as many family-size cars would be affected.
France’s Environment Minister Christophe Béchu said at the time that the surcharge amounted to “punitive environmentalism”.
And just before the Paris Olympics, Ms Hidalgo and other officials went into the Seine to prove the river was safe to swim.
-BBC
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